Synchronous conferencing is a class of communication techniques which are widely used on the Internet and other interactive computing networks. Synchronous conferencing allows two or more users to communicate in real time. Specifically, a user sends a message to another user through a synchronous conferencing application or computer program. The latter user ideally responds to the message within a short period of time, typically seconds or minutes at the most. Thus, synchronous conferencing facilitates a conversation back and forth between users.
Messages exchanged in synchronous conferencing systems generally contain textual data. However, many synchronous conferencing systems known in the art additionally allow exchanging other types of multimedia content. The messages are typically short in length. In modern synchronous conferencing systems, a typical message is one sentence or several words in length. However, a message may be several sentences long or, at the other extreme, may consist of a single character. Frequently, multiple messages which are part of the same conversation are exchanged within a session. The session beneficially groups the related messages together and provides context. The activity within a session, including any messages and any other activity, is frequently displayed within a window in a graphical user interface (GUI).
Synchronous conferencing has notable differences compared to electronic mail. Broadly speaking, electronic mail has many similarities to traditional written communication, while synchronous conferencing has many similarities to oral communication. Synchronous conferencing generally occurs in real-time, while electronic mail is generally asynchronous. In contrast to the rapid response common to synchronous conferencing, a delay of hours or even days is common before receiving a response to an electronic mail message. Additionally, synchronous conferencing generally uses different protocols than electronic mail. Electronic mail on the Internet is generally transmitted using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), the Post Office Protocol (POP) and/or the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). By contrast, synchronous conferencing typically employs an Internet Relay Chat protocol or a proprietary protocol. These differences cause synchronous conferencing to be well suited to tasks where electronic mail is a suboptimal communication modality. As a result, synchronous conferencing plays an important role within the Internet and other interactive computing networks.
Examples of synchronous conferencing systems known in the art include the AOL Instant Messenger™ service, the Google Talk™ synchronous conferencing service, the ICQ® service, the MSN® Messenger service, and the Yahoo!® Messenger service. AOL Instant Messenger is a trademark of AOL LLC, Dulles, Va., United States. Google Talk is a trademark of Google Inc., Mountain View, Calif., United States. ICQ is a registered trademark of AOL LLC, Dulles, Va., United States. MSN is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash., United States, in the United States and/or other countries. Yahoo! is a registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., United States.
A notable type of synchronous conferencing system is a chat room. A chat room allows a plurality of users to communicate with each other. A user may join a chat room. While joined, the user receives messages transmitted to the chat room by any other user who is also joined to the chat room. The user may likewise transmit messages to the chat room so that they are received by every other user of the chat room. A chat room is frequently created in order to discuss a specific topic or area of interest by multiple participants.
Another notable synchronous conferencing system is the Internet Relay Chat, commonly abbreviated as IRC. IRC has existed since the early days of the Internet and is still in widespread use today. IRC clients are available for a wide variety of system architectures and operating systems. An IRC network includes one or more servers. To connect to the network, a user connects to a specific server. An IRC network offers a plurality of channels, each of which is similar in nature to a chat room. Moreover, IRC also allows messages to be transmitted between two or more individual users. IRC is frequently used to create networks which are open to the public. Alternatively, IRC may beneficially be employed to create internal networks which are only available to a defined group, e.g., a corporation.
In many synchronous conferencing systems known in the art, each user has a profile containing identity information about the user. The profile may include a nickname for the user. In many synchronous conferencing systems known in the art, it is customary for users to be identified primarily by a nickname instead of by their actual name. Of course, a user may set his or her nickname to be their legal name. In some synchronous conferencing systems, a nickname is referred to as a handle or, in the case of IRC, a nick. A profile may also include an image known as an avatar. An avatar is any image which represents a particular user of a synchronous conferencing system. The profile may also include a message conveying the status of the user. A status message may, for example, indicate that the user is available, in a meeting, busy or entirely offline.
The profile may be viewable by other users of the synchronous conferencing system. Additionally, when a user sends a message, a subset of the user's profile may be transmitted along with the message. In particular, many synchronous conferencing systems known in the art display the nickname and avatar of the user who transmitted a message near the content of the message.
The same user may interact with different types of people. For example, a user may employ the same synchronous conferencing system to interact with both professional contacts and personal friends. In this case, the user may wish to display different identity information to each type of contact. For example, a user may wish to use a nickname and avatar which are appropriate to a professional setting when interacting with professional contacts. By contrast, the same user may wish to use a nickname and avatar which are less serious in nature when interacting with personal friends.
A limitation of many synchronous conferencing systems known in the art is that each user has only one profile. Thus, the same identity information is shown to all other users regardless of the relationships between the users. Due to this limitation, many users of synchronous conferencing systems known in the art configure entirely separate accounts or environments for different roles. In the example above, the user would need to create two separate accounts. The first account would contain the identity information appropriate to a professional setting, and the second account would contain the identity information appropriate to a personal setting. Furthermore, to interact appropriately with different types of people simultaneously, it is necessary to log in to multiple accounts simultaneously. Clearly, maintaining multiple separate accounts and performing multiple simultaneous logins is disadvantageous because it increases administrative complexity and resource usage.